Anger against the sun
by wongkk
Summary: A take on Kei's state of mind at the conclusion of the showdown with Chan's gang. Contains spoilers for the film.


Anger against the sun

Finally.

Finally, his breathing had become normal, changing from harshness and effort into the reassuring rhythm of relaxation. Finally, he had turned the corner to face recovery.

Looking at him, Kei watched the pale colour of Sho's skin slowly warm into a healthy brown. The bullet hole was still just visible, an innocent blemish on the smooth surface above the ribcage. Kei had forgotten how long it all took, that first process of recovery, when the DNA and metabolic functions were still clinging to their former mortality.

Although, even before, Sho had never quite seemed merely mortal. He had always seemed more like the sun – brighter and hotter than the others, with the power to give life, and to take it away.

Kei's first memory of Sho was a confusion of sunlight and pain, and then anger against still being alive. Sunlight, pain and anger – this triad was the perpetual chord resonating in the bass of their friendship.

When they had first met - when short, curious, young Sho had found a man lying in the rubble - Kei had been determined not to pursue living, to let the sun destroy him, despite the unquenchable appetite of his vampire nature fixing a hungry stare on the child's neck. And then the sun had struck his hand, almost like a condemnation, and pain had claimed him, overcoming the anger and his supernormal powers of consciousness.

Kei couldn't remember the rest of that meeting, couldn't picture the boy's face beyond the neck and the eyes. Skin and sun, the flash of sweetness and sympathy in the eyes, and then the sun again. The sun had saved them both that day, had saved Sho from being bitten and had saved Kei from burning into oblivion.

And now, at the end, Sho had been truly bitten and the anger was fresh and insistent in Kei, like the taste of raw ginger. Kei could still feel himself standing there, in the doorway of the old factory, standing in the height of his fury – angry with Sho for shutting him out, angry with Son for having some secret deal with Sho, angry with Chan's shit-thick goons for their arrogance in taking him out – trying to take him out. The bastards had no more succeeded at that than Sho had in keeping him a prisoner with sunbeams; sometimes anger could be more dreadful to defy than the sun.

So Kei had stormed to find his infuriating ally, the friend who called him out of a high-security prison just as the chance of peace was finally delivered to him. Sho had asked him to exchange real freedom for the mere lack of walls.

So - Kei had stormed into the shattered building, gun in hand, and, still angry, saw Sho lying at Son's feet, watched Sho turn his head weakly and lay in Kei's furious gaze an unfamiliar gift of entwined defeat, regret, apology, affection, gratitude, mourning – and unmistakable valediction.

How dare they! How dare that Taiwanese traitor pull a gun on Sho? And how dare Sho presume that he could just decide to – leave? Give up? Fail. Was that the secret deal?

Kei had seen that Sho was injured but anger had persuaded him of a hit to the leg – or maybe the hip; that was why Sho had fallen down. There was no way that Sho couldn't shoot Son off the wall, eyes open or eyes shut.

When Son had lifted the gun to line up his aim, Kei fired the full wrath of his anger and resentment into the black clothes which covered the black heart of the betrayer, Chan's man – with whom Sho had chosen a final alliance? Sho and Son had really come to a final understanding from which Kei had been carefully excluded? Oh - if that was the proposition, anger was the only possible reply.

And then, when he walked to confront Sho with his maddening behaviour, he had walked past the block of concrete which had blocked his view, and had seen - for the first time - the white shirt-front sodden with red and the silver rings of that strong right hand pressed hard against something whose attack was fatal. Sho's skin was so pale, glittering with the even sweat of severe shock; his body was in spasm, already resigning control to a failing physiology –

- and was Kei's anger still there? Oh, yes. Yes, the old mix of sunlight, pain and anger was a familiar strength. Even as he bent to lift Sho's shoulders away from the hardness of the ground, Kei knew that he was angry enough to bite. If Sho would not live for himself, then he would live for, by, because of Kei.

In all senses, Kei held onto Sho, and, when the shaking stopped, when the blue eyes relinquished their focus and the cold fingers uncurled their grip in his hand, the old confusion of sun, skin, the flashed image of Sho's angelic eyes against his enraged retina returned Kei to the first time they had met. In the ruins of a lost industrial prosperity, Kei had looked up at Sho-the-boy and had been angry, wanting to drive him away; this time, in the ruins of the lost prosperity of their own hearts, Kei looked down at Sho-the-man and felt so angry that he would risk his own person, defy the sun, anything to deny Sho the choice of leaving. Anything to make him stay.

In the ruins of a story whose plot had been steered towards a false conclusion by an impostor, Kei bit his way deep into a new chapter, into the chance of creating a better end. Finally, the sun could take a different course and the planets change their path.

What had that snake Son said? "This is our destiny."

Not when Kei had the power to change it!

On the human plane, Son might have had a point: at the outset, the three of them had pulled guns on each other – and then teamed up. In the end, the positions had altered and the team became its own enemy: Son had opposed Sho, Sho had finally walked away from Kei, and Kei - ? Kei could have killed both of them. Did kill Son. And finally killed Sho's human nature by using the vampire's trump card in the game of Destiny. You could hardly call it winning when there was only one player but at least Sho would not die a bit-part actor in a tragedy called Destiny, authored by that loser Son.

On the stones, Sho, in his white coat and red blood, was laid out like an exclamation mark. Kei's skin smoked in the fierce light, as though his anger was an incense rising to heaven and his pain a tangible pyre. It was a scene of monumental gestures, of grand metaphors and timeless heroic significance.

By contrast, the time since had been nothing but prosaic. Kei had carried Sho back to the flat, had washed him, put him between clean sheets and waited for the trauma to become healing, waited for the chest wound to reverse its damage into wholeness.

For so many hours, Kei sat by the bed and stared. Anger still kept its flame alight but the sight of a cheated death could not be observed in anger alone.

Lying so silent and straight, Sho looked like a judgment – terrible and right, a god-like nightmare born of the knowledge that hell was truth. The form was handsome but the substance was surely to be feared. Divine, dreadful. Kei could not make his mouth whisper the word, "Friend" when he saw how far Sho was changed.

Sho was no longer unconscious in sickness; Sho was sleeping but vigorous, muscled, skilful. And, soon, this larger, livelier man would wake, and then the anger would change hands. Change hearts. And this time, Sho would have the same superhuman strength and speed which had been Kei's solitary curse for so many years.

The curse had protected him for long enough, but all Kei would have to protect him now was his promise to Hana.

Kei looked down at Sho. Would it be enough?

The gold eyelashes were beginning to separate, showing a line of arctic blue between. He would soon find out. Finally.


End file.
